Friday, 15 August 2014

Russia's 'aid convoy' trucks: Trojan Horses, or Trojan Mules?

Courtney Weaver of
the Financial Times, who has been traveling with the Russian "aid
convoy," has been taking a look inside the Russian trucks said to be
carrying aid to the Donbas. Unsurprisingly, many of the ones she looked at were
mostly empty. See her pictures at https://twitter.com/courtneymoscow.

Why unsurprisingly?
Because the amount of aid Russia said it was sending (about 2,000 tonnes) did
not tally with the amount of tonnage the nearly 300 trucks of the convoy were
capable of hauling. Even accounting for backup trucks in case of breakdowns,
less than 100 trucks would have been needed to carry the declared tonnage (at
25 tonnes per truck, only 80 trucks required.)

Russian convoy
drivers told Weaver the trucks were lightly loaded in case there were
breakdowns, and loads had to be repacked from a broken down vehicle into
another one in the convoy, but as far as we know all the trucks made it from
Moscow to Rostov region without problems, so this seems excessive and unlikely.
For comparison, Ukraine's aid convoy of 75 trucks carried to the Donbas 800
tonnes (just over 10.6 tonnes per truck), in a convoy of much lighter trucks
than the heavy 10-wheeler Kamaz trucks sent by the Russians.

Why then, do the
Russians need all that extra space?

As far as I can
see, there are two most likely reasons for Russia sending this amount of trucks
to the Donbas area – an optimistic one, and a pessimistic one.

The optimistic one
is that the Russians intend to carry out of the Donbas a great deal more than
they hope to bring in – a load of weapons, supplies and fighters - in a covert
withdrawal of Russia's proxy army from Ukraine. This would be a face-saving
withdrawal for the Kremlin, allowing the Russians to claim that their troops
were never in eastern Ukraine, and the war was a purely Ukrainian internal
conflict. Russia, in that case, would not have suffered a military defeat at
the hands of Ukraine.

The pessimistic one
is that Russia is deploying a large supply facility to the war region, which
will be used to support a large-scale military intervention in eastern Ukraine,
perhaps as part of its long-feared "peacekeeping" intervention, or
even an all-out open invasion of the east and south of Ukraine. The deceptive
nature of the deployment of such a logistics vehicle group would fit in well
with the new Russian military tactics of Hybrid War, which seamlessly blends
the use of stealth, deception and disinformation when preparing for and
implementing an attack on another country. Further support for this scenario is
the fact that the Russians are still sending armor into Ukraine to support
their proxy army in Luhansk and Donetsk – as eye-witnessed by the Western media
for the first time on the evening of August 14. It does not appear that the
Russians are scaling down their military operation in eastern Ukraine – rather the
opposite seems to be the case.

The Russian
military's Hybrid War tactics are at least as revolutionary as the Wehrmacht's
Blitzkrieg from the Second World War, but thankfully each time such tactics are employed
they become less effective, as ways are thought up to counter them. (Germany's
Blitzkrieg only really worked properly once, during the Fall of France in
1940.) We are all now on the look out for Little Green Men, and hopefully
becoming more immune to the Kremlin's lies.

Nevertheless, we
should still be wary: the fact that the Russian "aid convoy" presents
us with puzzles could well be an indicator that it is indeed a Trojan Horse -
not all that it seems – although it might be more accurately described as a Trojan
packhorse. Ukraine should be very leery of allowing such a potentially
dangerous dual-use "aid" convoy onto its territory.